APRIL 2004 SPOTLIGHT:

PREVENTING CHILD ABUSE

Prevention of child abuse and neglect is an essential component of a community’s response. It may be even more important when working with refugee families and other newcomers to the United States, since so much about family life in this country, as well as the risks to children here, may be new to them.

Connecting parents to available services and other sources of support and educating them about local laws related to family issues, such as the supervision of children and definitions of abuse and neglect, can help prepare them for success raising children in this new country.

Local agencies are vital to child abuse and prevention efforts. They are ideal liaisons for refugees and other newcomers to a local community’s services and laws, and are well positioned to watch for indications of potential harm to children.

This month BRYCS Featured Search supplies resources geared to providers on the strengths and challenges of refugees and other newcomers, related to preventing child abuse and neglect.

Other BRYCS Tools for Local Refugee and Child Serving Agencies

BRYCS has conducted several trainings to help parenting program managers and staff improve and sustain their programs. Lessons learned in these trainings are shared in Strengthening Services for Refugee Parents: Guidelines and Resources, a comprehensive manual based on interviews with twenty-eight programs in the U.S. Click to see the Executive Summary and information on ordering the manual.

The responsibility for preventing child abuse and neglect is not just in the hands of parents or in agencies acting alone; collaboration among service providers is essential. To help foster this collaboration, BRYCS has developed and tested a cross-service training method that enables refugee community associations, resettlement organizations, child welfare agencies, and others to understand each other’s work, share resources, and develop pathways for ongoing communication. The resulting manual, Building Bridges: A Cross-Service Training Guide, based on lessons learned from trainings held in Atlanta and St. Louis, takes the reader through a detailed, step-by-step process for local service communities to plan, develop, and host their own cross-service trainings.

This summer, BRYCS awarded six minigrants to local agencies to act as leads in setting up cross-service trainings with service providers in their own localities. Watch this website for updates on these initiatives.